The Portugese man told me to stop reading guide books.
How did he know what I was looking for?
Daniela, my Italian wife, couldn’t cry for fear
her hair would fall from her head, for fear
that chemotherapy would be just as it’s described:
Agent Orange with fettucini,
Boiling a pot of water would be better, I said.
Let’s watch it boil to gather the dust and sing,
For in music, there are composers and then,
there are samplers. You sir, are a composer.

]]>By: jbnightingalehttp://www.burnmagazine.org/essays/2011/10/marc-davidson-saudade/#comment-102409
Fri, 18 Nov 2011 07:35:17 +0000http://www.burnmagazine.org/?p=10248#comment-102409The first time I viewed these sculptures, I clicked through in rapid succession without even reading the title while distracted at work. About half way through, I slowed down. Then, I took each one in slowly, and by the end, I was nearly in tears. Your love is so profoundly experienced through each sculpture – a testament that will surely last longer than all present.

Thank you for the powerful reminder of love and loss and our short time here on earth. I am sure your daughters will come to treasure this series and through these memories, feel the love you all share throughout life. Love & Peace.

]]>By: Zisis Kardianoshttp://www.burnmagazine.org/essays/2011/10/marc-davidson-saudade/#comment-101221
Wed, 02 Nov 2011 17:29:41 +0000http://www.burnmagazine.org/?p=10248#comment-101221Very emotional but not cheap sentimantalism here. Deeply human. I couldn’t resist in looking at the pictures without the artwork. Of course the artwork is part of your expression but the photos alone are so telling.
They made me feel for you but also impressed me.
]]>By: marc davidsonhttp://www.burnmagazine.org/essays/2011/10/marc-davidson-saudade/#comment-101106
Tue, 01 Nov 2011 12:08:00 +0000http://www.burnmagazine.org/?p=10248#comment-101106

Joy is over there in her incredible clothes
She has silver silk shimmering down to her toes
I was doing the best that I can I suppose
But that little girl dancer
Eventually grows
Well she grows

You can’t imagine all the times that I tried
To uncover the source of the tears that you cried
Let’s throw it away and just go for a ride
And you’d say ‘€œok’€ but you’d keep it inside
And I tried
I tried
I tried
I tried

We want you to be happy
Don’t live inside the gloom
We want you to be happy
Come step outside your room
We want you to be happy
Cause this is your song too

I never thought I could have it so good
You were the song that my soul understood
That time is a river that flows through the woods
And it lead us to places we both understood
Would be gone
Before to long
Would be gone
Before to long

When we were young we thought life was a game
But then somebody leaves you and your never the same
All of the places and people belong to the puzzle
But one of the pieces is gone
And it’s you
It’s you
It’s you
Joy, it’s you

We want you to be happy
Don’t live inside the gloom
We want you to be happy
Come step outside your room
We want you to be happy
Cause this is your song too

Anytime we’ll weather this storm
Inside together you’ll see the change
When the sun shines through

We want you to be happy
Don’t live inside the gloom
We want you to be happy
Come step outside your room
We want you to be happy
Cause this is your song too
This is your song too
This is your song too
This is your song too
This is your song too
This is your song too
This is your song too
This is your song too
This is your song too

]]>By: evahttp://www.burnmagazine.org/essays/2011/10/marc-davidson-saudade/#comment-100897
Wed, 26 Oct 2011 08:22:07 +0000http://www.burnmagazine.org/?p=10248#comment-100897Back to home.. seeing the pictures on your site of these above here makes the circle close.. but more than a circle it is a spiral that continues through you and your daughters.. my best wishes to all of you..
]]>By: bob blackhttp://www.burnmagazine.org/essays/2011/10/marc-davidson-saudade/#comment-100238
Sat, 15 Oct 2011 15:00:34 +0000http://www.burnmagazine.org/?p=10248#comment-100238Sidney:

as i promised, some words about Saudade, for as we discussed earlier this year, after having written so much and so often about the work of others, of photographers who I do not know or have no relationship with, it is now time to toss out something for you in public…..much of this, I have already told you directly over wine or Pho or amid the burning of wood and dry carapace of crackled leaves, but the work deserves a reckoning, and not just because of the events or its genesis or of our friendship, so here is something for you…..

and in a sense it rounds out this intense year, for both of us, and in truth, i can’t think of a better place to stop and rest and return to the quieting that has become such an important chemical and food in both of our lives….will give you copy of loomings next week…

You only live twice:
Once when you are born
And once when you look death in the face.

–After Basho
-Fleming

We are born of the land and we return to the land, our carapace and our undoing. Feed from that which is grown and harvest and killed and plucked to its breakdown into the chemistry and form which becomes us, we cradle all that around as the mechanics of our being and shuttling, until at the turn’s end, we decompose and ashen into the very chemistry that returns us to the ground around, only to begin again in the feeding of something and someone after. Feed on the dead, we are born of the dead only to give birth again to the living in our dying. A simple formula that sustains us, that churns our oversized selves into simpler markers: we are of those lost before and we become those who acquire life after. Detritus and Fertilizer both.

What I love about these objects is that they are neither Memento mori nor nostalgic love letters, but something more sustaining, more simple, more generous. They are of the earth. Culled together from the detritus that you have found around your home and woods (steel, wood, branch, cloth, log, wire, tincan, iron), they hold not just the memory of Sylvia and your life together, but they marry the essence of who she was (a creative and strong woman who loved the earth and love to make things from objects lying about) with the land that she loved so well. And while the story of her suicide and long struggle with peace and oneness drives the shaping of the construction, their bent unhinging and their fractured coalescence, their cohesion and strength reminds that long after we depart, and continuing after she left, presence continues to nourish and create. Their simplicity and their fragility (easily falling apart as if made by a child), something that is difficult to see in the pictures, are further powerful qualities of these sculptures. They do not supplant her life nor the land from which they were fabricated, but are extensions of the human effort to wrest from unimaginable unknowing to simple construction. and how beautiful they look against the trunks of trees, or suspended over the limb of a creek, or within the crown of THAT one particular tree. Long after you have left that land, they too will return to detritus and cast-aside ‘junk’ to be re-found and reused by another….

that cycle is a blessing….

As i mentioned about Goldsworthy, the power in these sculptures lay their directness and in their unpretentious truth: though they shall fall apart one day as well, the very life, the very light, the very nature that lit them into existence, jettisoned by fain and guilt and horror, will keep them alive and cycling…..

the work is made up of the very fabric of not only, literally your life together (photos and ribbons from your book, and African wedding bands and drawings), but the spirit of that life. Not morose, but living. A testament for both Laurence and Sauren that Sylvia’s life was not that of abandonment, but that her life was of giving…and that lives inside the two of them and these objects as well…..

The refinement of love as an act of giving, rather than taking….

and god damned, if they aren’t incredibly beautiful to carry in one’s hands. I feel priviledged to have tacked them up into trees…..

A reminder to all about the act of why we make things. for me, to make pictures and books and words is not, until themselves, terribly important, but are rather gestures about connectivity: to the world around, to the land around, to loved ones around.

In their rusty, unshapely beauty, lay a simple truth for me and one that I wish more would understand clearly:

Just one further little point and that is I think you are an extraordinary landscape photographer. These days I’m not usually interested at all by anything connected to the landscape but I must admit this is the second time on Burn I’ve been floored. I haven’t seen anything as connected and as evocative as your’s trees beach and snow covered river since Sally Mann’s “Deep South”. Your images ring of life in it’s full extent and I think perhaps sometime when you once again find the strength to start taking pictures, you perhaps should give landscape photography a try.

]]>By: Paulhttp://www.burnmagazine.org/essays/2011/10/marc-davidson-saudade/#comment-100203
Fri, 14 Oct 2011 18:35:23 +0000http://www.burnmagazine.org/?p=10248#comment-100203“You know you are in love
when you see the world in her eyes,
and her eyes everywhere in the world.”

This essay makes me drop everything about me and run and hug my wife with my arms holding her tight trying my best to keep her and now here beside me. Those moments when we all slip into automatic mode and love is just something taken for granted, this work slaps you right across the face and sets you straight back on track. I can also see this a cannonball aiming for the stars sending a message of love of how nothing has changed and the love is only stronger and all will be OK.
Please take care of yourself, your two daughters and the biggest of hearts thumping away inside you. As usual you and your daughters will be present on my mind as I walk tomorrow through a field of now blossom less trees; this is the magic of Burn. You’re not alone, we’re somehow, somewhere with you.

thank you for your kind words. by putting these sculptures out there into the world, i hope in some small way, it can show that it is okay to talk about death and loss. talking and crying and experiencing this loss together as a family has made all the difference in our on-going healing process.

as painful as my wife’s suicide was for me, i agonized on how and when i was going to tell my daughters the truth about their mother’s illness and how she died. after much deliberation, i came to the realization that the sooner they assimilate this into their lives, the better. so i took them for a walk into the woods to the tree where there mother hung herself and i explained everything and answered their questions as honestly as i could.

they deserve to know the truth about their mother more than anyone else and i’ve helped them to realize that how their mother died isn’t who she was. having that talk was a big relief and i think it reinforced to my girls the ideas of trust and honesty that are going to get us through this experience.

IMANTS

yes. let’s touch base through email…

GORDON

the photos in the woods which are on my site i did after i submitted these sculptures. andy goldsworthy has been a big inspiration and taking these photos on aluminum and making something out in the woods felt like the natural progression.

GRACIE

thank you for your kind, honest words. they serve as affirmation for putting the work out there.

i am convinced that being honest and open with my words and emotions has helped my daugters in their own grief journey. i could never express in words the release i felt sitting on the ground in front of the tree, the 3 of us hugging and crying. it was something we had to do to be able to move forward.

my dad died when i was very young. i remember us being very close.
the only thing i wish was different was i wish my mom talked about how much she hurt.
so i wouldnt feel so alone in my grief.

this takes me back to the time when i needed something/ someone to console me.
comfort i find now from YOU, someone i dont know, for a pain scores of years ago.

thanks for doing that for me today.
you cannot imagine the difference you’ve made.

]]>By: Gordon Lafleurhttp://www.burnmagazine.org/essays/2011/10/marc-davidson-saudade/#comment-100185
Fri, 14 Oct 2011 14:43:13 +0000http://www.burnmagazine.org/?p=10248#comment-100185marc
I wrote a comment yesterday but somehow it has not appeared here.

This is wonderful, rich, and very moving. The red cloth, chains, rust, roots, rocks, and other references all speak to me of where your heart must be taking you, and about the connection of our spirit to the universe. I’m awed by the depth of this.
I have to admit that I like the edit on your website even more and wish you had included many of the images there.